The surge in WFH was expected to trigger a baby boom. New data says otherwise

Australian research has cast doubt on claims that couples who work from home are more likely to start families or have extra children.

Ahead of new figures that are expected to confirm the nation’s fertility rate at a record low, the analysis by independent think-tank e61 suggests factors outside the greater flexibility offered by working from home is not enough for couples to take the parenthood plunge.

Fertility rates around the developed world have been falling for decades, prompting an avalanche of government policies stretching from making mothers with several children tax-free to direct financial handouts.

Some analysis has suggested that enabling people to work from home both reduces some costs associated with having children while also making it easier on parents to care for their newborns.

Research released earlier this year by a group of academics from Germany, the United States and Britain found adults who worked from home at least one day a week between 2023 and 2025 experienced a higher fertility rate. They found when both parents work at home at least once a week, total fertility lifts by 0.32 children per woman.

But soon-to-be-released work by e61 research manager Pelin Akyol suggests there is barely if any change in fertility rates among Australian women who took up working from home during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Akyol compared post-2020 fertility rates of women aged between 30 and 44 across occupations with the ability to work remotely against 2019 levels.

Despite the increase in working from home among this group, there was no discernible change in fertility rates. While there was a small “baby bump” in 2021, Australia’s fertility rate started falling again in 2022 and reached a record low of 1.48 births per woman in 2024.

Akyol said the pandemic had created a natural experiment that allowed her to study the impact of the large lift in working from home that had occurred since 2020. While it had enabled more people to work at home, it had not led to a measurable change in fertility.

“Australia’s fertility decline is driven by various factors including the cost of raising children, housing affordability, economic security and the career costs of parenthood,” she said.

“Working from home can make some parts of family life easier. It reduces commuting time and gives workers more control over where they work, which may make it easier to combine paid work and care. However, it does not remove the financial and time costs of raising children, and it may not reduce the career costs of parenthood.”

Akyol cautioned that her research did not mean workplace flexibility was unimportant for families or that it could have an impact over a longer period.

“Greater flexibility may still help parents combine work and care, even if it is not enough on its own to change fertility decisions. Workplace flexibility is therefore only one part of the fertility debate,” she said.

While working from home surged during and out of the pandemic, it was also accompanied by the largest increase in property prices on record with some capitals recording increases of more than 30 per cent. That has prompted claims that high-priced housing, both in Australia and around the developed world, has contributed to the global drop in fertility.

In previous periods of economic upheaval, there have been sharp falls in fertility. Australia’s fertility rate fell by 20 per cent during the first five years of the Great Depression.

Akyol found that women who were in jobs that were more able to be done from home reported lower intentions to have children after 2020 and said they were less likely to have more children. But she also found that this pattern had started before the pandemic, suggesting that working from home had done nothing to turn around women’s child-rearing plans.

The figures come ahead of the latest report on the number of births from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The report will cover 2025.

In 2024, there were 292,000 births recorded across the country with the national population at 27.8 million. A decade earlier, there were 300,000 births in a population that was almost 4 million smaller.

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